It’s fascinating to hear the vitriolic attacks against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder. His group’s crime, apparently, is publishing leaked–yet accurate—documents for the world to see. These documents originated from agencies and organizations with long histories of lies and cover-ups, including our own government, and often reveal serious crimes and abuse of power. The attacks against Assange and his site show how scary and threatening the truth can be. They also demonstrate how much we lack and need aggressive independent journalism, so we won’t have to rely solely on WikiLeaks.